The recruitment and retention of good professionals continue pose challenge for the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC). The officials from the Commission say this has impeded their fight against corruption. The challenges were highlighted when the Ethics and Credentials Committee of the National Assembly presented the ACC’s annual report at the Parliament, last week.
One of the main issues discussed in the National Assembly last Thursday was the need to delink the Anti-Corruption Commission from the Royal Civil Service Commission (RCSC).
One of the Commissioners, Kezang Jamtsho, said there is a need for the ACC to delink from the RCSC.
“The ACC commission is an independent body and people working in ACC are under the RCSC.” He questioned how ACC will investigate if there is corruption in RCSC, which he said, could be a possible scenario in the future.
Kezang Jamtsho also said the Commission is looking at having financial autonomy in order to perform in an independent and effective manner. He said they have so many senior positions that are vacant. “But no one is coming forward.”
As a measure ACC has been recruiting graduates and training them. “It takes lots of time to make them competent investigators.”
The Commissioner also added that many graduates leave after working for three years, and the only way to retain them is through attractive remuneration and service conditions.
The ACC annual report, this year, highlighted corruption in the recruitment and selection procedure as well.
“RCSC is not only the sole recruitment agency. Every year we have a pointed out one specific problem in corruption and this year it was recruitment. I think it got mixed up with our delinking one. So in our report favoritism and nepotism in the recruitment is a big challenge and was highlighted this year.”
He said the news that he was watching on BBS indicated that RCSC has messed up in the recruitment system which he said is not true. “That’s why we wrote this report is that we want the recruitment system as a whole to be improved.”
A corruption risk assessment of recruitment and selection identifies risks such as the manipulation of selection procedures, non- declaration of conflict of interest, leakage of information to favored candidates during tests and interviews, among others.
QUOTE BOX
Investigation is a very specialized job. We cannot pick someone and put him in to investigation right away
ACC Commissioner, Kezang Jamtsho
